“Education then, beyond all other devices of human origin, is a great equalizer of the conditions of men,—the balance wheel of the social machinery.... I mean that it gives each man the independence and the means by which he can resist the selfishness of other men. It does better than to disarm the poor of their hostility toward the rich: it prevents being poor.”
—Horace Mann, Twelfth Annual Report of Horace Mann as Secretary of Massachusetts State Board of Education, 1848